


to think that we could stay the same

by ShowMeAHero



Series: as the ghost begins to bleed [5]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Amputee Georgie Denbrough, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety Attacks, Big Dick Richie Tozier, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Domestic Fluff, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Eloping, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Families of Choice, Fix-It, Fluff, Gen, Georgie Denbrough Lives, Humor, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Jewish Richie Tozier, Love Confessions, M/M, Marriage, Mike Denbrough, Mild Smut, Panic Attacks, Past Child Abuse, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-IT Chapter Two (2019), Resurrection, Richie Tozier is a Mess, Stanley Uris Lives, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Weddings, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 21:51:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21215636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShowMeAHero/pseuds/ShowMeAHero
Summary: "Fuck," Richie gasps."What happened?" Eddie tries. Richie just presses his clammy hands against his face and exhales, trying to calm his pounding heart and the grenade that just went off in his brain."I opened the door for Stan," Richie says, staring down the drain. "When I brought him back. I opened the door to oblivion. The book showed me how to open the door." He looks up at Eddie. "It didn't show me how toclosethe door.""Fuck," Eddie echoes.





	to think that we could stay the same

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoy this enormous addition to the necromancy series. I really loved writing this part, so I hope you really love reading it.
> 
> Title taken from ["Two Slow Dancers"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUfkfJfsKrc) by Mitski.
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS: There is a description of an almost-suicide attempt in here, as well as mentions of past child abuse.

Richie scoots himself up into a sitting position against the headboard, still hard, hands sweating with fear. It's two o'clock in the morning, and so Bill has _ no reason _to be calling unless somebody's dead, which is exactly what Richie expects to hear. It's Bill, so maybe Mike? Maybe Mike has died, and Bill will tell him that Mike was killed but Richie can bring him back, but maybe he can't. Richie's not sure what he'd do without Mike, though. He brings the phone to his ear despite his fear and says, "Bill, is someone dead?"

"Uhh— No, actually," Bill tells him. "Richie, I think you did something."

"I've done a lot of somethings," Richie says, rubbing his hand over his face. Eddie flips on the bedside lamp. He frowns at Richie, then grabs a tissue off the side table and wipes at something on Richie's face. "You'll have to be more specific."

"Georgie's here," Bill says. Richie's hands turn clammy, his veins rushing with ice water. "He's— Rich, he's, like, thirty-five. He can't talk."

"You're fucking kidding me," is the first thing Richie says. He jumps out of bed and tugs his boxer briefs back on before ripping the bedroom door open and sprinting to the living room.

"Richie, where—" Eddie calls after him as he runs out, but Richie doesn't hear the end of the question as he slides to a stop in front of their bookcase.

"I don't know h-h-how," Bill says. "He just showed up on my parents' front porch here in Derry. He's missing his arm— The arm, th-the stump, it was still bleeding, Rich. Didn't you say—"

"Yeah, yeah, same with Eddie and Stan," Richie says, finally locating _ Necromancy _ and pulling it off the shelf. "What the fuck are you doing in Derry, anyways?"

"Um." There's a beat of silence, during which Richie frantically flips through the pages of the book. "I brought Mike back."

"Why the fuck did you do that?" Richie asks. He finally lands on 'How To Reach Oblivion' and starts hurriedly skimming the pages.

"Uh," Bill continues, eloquent as fucking ever.

"Spit it out, Big Bill, what'd you do?" Richie asks. Eddie finally joins Richie, wearing sweatpants, much to Richie's dismay.

"I brought him back to propose to him," Bill says softly, pretty much a whisper. "But I—"

"What the _ fuck _is going on up there?" Richie demands. "You're getting married and your little brother crawled out of the sewer—"

"He's getting _ married?" _ Eddie asks incredulously, as Bill hisses, "I haven't asked him yet, shut _ up—" _

"You have to understand, this is a lot of information to get at once," Richie tells him, reading each subheading and finding them all massively unhelpful. "I don't even know what I did to cause this."

"Rich, they're all b-back," Bill says. Richie pauses, looking up at Eddie and his wide, dark eyes, apparently as confused as Richie feels.

"Who is 'all'?" Richie asks hesitantly. He wishes he didn't. He wishes he could just go back to sleep and nobody called him about dead people rising from the grave and nobody stops him from Eddie riding his face and he can just live in peace and harmony. The fucking universe evidently has different plans for him, though, and he's _ pissed _ about it.

"The kids who went m-missing," Bill explains. "All of them. Betty Ripsom, A-Adrian Mellon, even Hockstetter—"

Richie drops his phone. He stares down at the book, then looks up at Eddie before he drops that to the floor, too.

"Richie, what's wrong?" Eddie asks, before Richie runs out of the room to the kitchen, just barely making it to the sink before he's sick. He feels Eddie more than he hears him, hovering next to him, hands in midair.

"Fuck," Richie gasps, running the tap and splashing his face.

"What happened?" Eddie tries again. Richie just presses his clammy hands against his face and exhales, trying to calm his pounding heart and the grenade that just went off in his brain.

"I opened the door for Stan," Richie says, staring down the drain. "When I brought him back. I opened the door to oblivion. The book showed me how to open the door." He looks up at Eddie. "It didn't show me how to _ close _ the door."

"Fuck," Eddie echoes.

"I assumed it would close on its own," Richie explains desperately. Eddie pulls Richie's face in, kisses him on the cheek.

"I know," Eddie says against his skin. When he pulls back, he says, "Give me one second," then runs back out of the room, so Richie slumps to the floor, back against the cabinets. Eddie comes back with Richie's phone and _ Necromancy, _pressing them both into Richie's hands.

"Bill's still on," Eddie tells him. "Talk to him, Rich. Figure out what's going on."

"I don't know what to _ do," _ Richie says, looking down at his phone. He's shocked his heart hasn't come out of his mouth yet, it's pounding so hard. His hands are shaking so hard he's worried he'll rip the pages in the book. He looks up at Eddie and can feel how flushed his face is, hot tears that he has no control over streaming down his face. "Eddie."

"Hey, hey, it's okay, it's okay," Eddie says, hitting the ground and pulling Richie into his lap. Richie has to awkwardly bend and fold in half to get there, but as soon as their skin touches, he's sobbing full-throttle. "Rich— Rich, you have to calm down, babe, you're spiralling, stay with me."

"I can't do this," Richie tells him, voice cracking, muffled by Eddie's warm skin. He clambers closer to Eddie, twisting himself up further into Eddie's lap. Eddie pulls his head in and tucks it under his chin, letting Richie curl up in a ball of limbs. "I can't. It can't be me. I can't do it, Eddie, I _ can't, _I don't know what I'm doing, this isn't— I don't—" Richie takes a shuddering breath. "I fucked up. I fucked up—"

"Richie, no, no, you didn't fuck up," Eddie tells him. "You didn't fuck up. It's okay. It's okay! It is, you saved them, they're going to be okay—"

"They've been dead for thirty years," Richie says, cutting him off. "They— Oh, fuck. Oh, _ fuck—" _

"Get up," Eddie tells him, and Richie scrambles to his feet before vomiting down the sink drain again. He presses his forehead against the faucet and tries to let the cold metal ground him. Something warm gets pushed against his face, and it takes Richie a second before he realizes Eddie's holding his phone up to his ear.

"Bill," Richie manages, hands still white-knuckling the hot and cold water knobs. "What do we do?"

"I d-d-don't know," Bill says. "Does the buh-book say anything about this? Anything like th-this?"

Richie takes a second to pull in one deep breath, then another, forcibly shoving down the waves of panic crashing over his head. He stands up straight and, still trembling, grabs _ Necromancy _ off the ground and flips back to 'How To Reach Oblivion,' to the subheading he had last seen: 'Keeping The Sides Separated.' He skims the section and his blood curdles; he can't close his own door on oblivion. It's open forever now, a connection between him and the other side that can never be shut down. Richie wants to scream, but then he looks up at Eddie, at his face, at the mangled scar that spans his chest, and remembers Eddie wouldn't be alive without this. He remembers Stan wouldn't be alive, either, and now— Bill might get Georgie back, and these other kids— They've been dead thirty years, but surely that's better than still being dead. Surely it's fine.

"What does the book say, Richie?" Eddie asks. Richie has to reread the section he's been staring at to properly process it.

"It says, 'Once you have opened the gateway between yourself and Oblivion, you may not latch this gate again. Forever will you be between two sides of life, forever will you walk the tightrope of death—'" Richie wipes at one eye with the back of his hand, then says, "God, this is worse than one of your books, Bill."

"Go f-f-fuck yourself," Bill says without heat.

"I w-w-will," Richie taunts back. Eddie pinches his bare wrist. "I can't. I can't be a fucking death portal, I just can't. I'm not—" Richie stops, shakes his head. He dog-ears the page they're on and closes the book, looking down at it as his brain whirls through thoughts faster than he can process them. He keeps coming back to the same conclusion: _ remove yourself from the equation. _ Stan had done it, had known it was the right thing to do.

Richie's hands start sweating the more he thinks about it. He looks up to Eddie, at him holding the phone halfway between the two of them, his face furrowed with worry. Richie didn't want him to feel worry anymore. "I think I have to die."

"No," Eddie says, without a single beat of hesitation. "What are you, fucking stupid? What's wrong with you? You do not have to _ die—" _

"I have to restore the natural order—"

"Fuck the natural order!" Eddie exclaims. "There is no fucking natural order, Richie. Bill's dead brother is back to life thirty years after he died. That's not a natural fucking order."

"Yeah, because _ I _ fucked that up," Richie says. _ "I'm _the reason Georgie is back and death doesn't mean anything. Oh, fuck, I can't—"

"Rich," Bill interrupts through the phone. "It's just the kids who were taken."

Richie stops, then starts trying to figure out what the fuck Bill means by that. He gives up quick. "What the fuck does that_ mean?" _

"It means you're not just accidentally r-resurrecting the entire town, Richie, it's j-j-just the kids," Bill says. "Just the kids It t-t-took. That's all. I think you're tied in with It somehow, Rich."

Richie lets this sink in for a second before he groans. _ "Fuck. _ The motherfucking _ Turtle." _

"The Turtle?" Bill asks. Eddie passes over the phone and takes Richie's hand, pulling him back towards their bedroom while Richie tries to explain the Turtle, which he doesn't even fully understand himself. Stan could probably explain it better, but Richie isn't about to risk waking him up for that.

He should probably call Stan anyways. They should probably call all the Losers, and they should _ probably _ go back to Derry, and there's so much they should _ probably _do that Richie starts to get worked up again, his fragmented explanation of the Turtle breaking off as Eddie pushes him up against their bed until he just sits down on the edge.

"Richie, why don't you try to get some sleep, and we can talk again tomorrow?" Bill suggests, the fourth time Richie loses his train of thought.

"I wanna be on a plane to Bangor by noon," Richie says. Eddie furrows his brow. "We have to go up there, Eddie."

"Rich, I don't—" Eddie begins, then stops. "I— I don't know how to protect you from this."

Richie's entire chest feels like it crinkles up like cellophane. He loves Eddie more than he loves anyone, anything else, loves him in his bone marrow, in the heat of his heart, in the base of his spine. Eddie is so intertwined with who Richie is, tangled up in wisps with Richie's veins, has been since they were toddlers. Richie couldn't live without him. That makes every second of this bullshit worth it: that it's all happening because he brought Eddie back. That's enough. That's more than enough; it's everything.

"It's okay," Richie says. "We're together again. We can do anything when we're together."

"Once a Loser, always a L-Loser," Bill says over the phone. "Are you sure you want to come back?"

"I've known for a while that I'd need to go back to Derry eventually," Richie says. Eddie reaches out and takes his hand, worrying the back of Richie's knuckles with his thumb. "I just hoped I'd be, like, ninety when it happened."

"I'm so s-s-sorry, Richie," Bill says. "I'm sorry it's y-you."

"May as well be me," Richie says. "At least if I'm the one who dies first this time, we'll—"

"Beep, beep, Richie," Eddie interrupts, and, when Richie looks to him, his eyes are glassy and he's looking down at their hands.

"We'll be there tomorrow," Richie says.

"What about the show?" Bill asks.

"We have family emergency backup plans where they just do reruns," Richie says. "I think this qualifies as a family emergency."

"I'll fuh-fucking say." Bill is quiet for a moment before he says, "I love you. Both of you— Eddie, I l-luh-love you too. I want you both to know th-that."

"Gay," Richie replies. Eddie smacks him out of instinct, and Richie says, _ "What? _ He _ is, _ and so am I, so it's _ fine—" _

"God, you're so repressed," Eddie comments, which is the pot fucking calling the kettle black if Richie's ever heard it, but he follows that up with a surprisingly tender, "I love you, too, Bill."

"Yeah," Richie adds. "Me, too. I love you."

"Travel safe," Bill says. "I'm going to call Bev and Ben. You two just go back to sleep."

"We weren't sleeping," Richie says. "Eddie was riding my face—"

"D-Don't come to Derry," Bill interrupts him, voice raised nearly to a shout over Richie. Eddie's face is so red it's nearly purple as he claps his hand over Richie's mouth in the same breath. "I changed my muh-mind. Don't come, you're d-disgusting—"

"Too late," Richie says. "Too bad you just told me you love me, Big Bill, because now I _ know _you're full of shit—"

"I can love you and not w-want to hear about you eating Eddie's ass a-a-at the same time," Bill tells him. Eddie shoves a pillow over Richie's face as soon as those words come through the phone, and Richie's only partially sure he doesn't actually intend to suffocate him.

"Richie's passed away, he can't talk anymore," Eddie shouts towards the phone. "Goodnight, Bill."

"Night, Eddie," Bill replies. Richie shouts a goodbye, but it's too muffled by the pillow to be discernible as actual words. Richie hears Eddie hang up, and then the pillow is lifted off his face. He gasps for air more dramatically than he needs to, so Eddie socks him in the face with the pillow one last time before he throws it back to the head of the bed. They're sitting side-by-side, now, on the mattress, where just half an hour ago Richie woke up to Eddie's dark eyes staring at him and thought he could do that every second of every day for the rest of his life. Now, he's sort of terrified that the rest of his life won't be a very long time at all. He had pictured a long time; in his wildest dreams, he imagines himself and Eddie as old men with grandchildren.

"Do you want to have kids?" Richie asks. Eddie frowns, brow furrowing. He pulls his legs up onto the bed and folds them underneath himself.

"Right now?" Eddie asks, and Richie flicks the scar on his cheek. Eddie swats him away.

"I'm serious."

"First time for everything."

"Never mind, I shouldn't have—"

"No, no, I—" Eddie says, then stops. He looks down at his hands, cupped in his lap. "I, uhh. I didn't know that was something you wanted. What made you… I mean, why do you ask?"

"I just thought, I don't really wanna die anytime soon, and when I thought about when I _ did _ wanna die, I pictured us as old men with a bunch of grandkids." Richie looks at the top of Eddie's bowed head, at the bedhead mess of his dark hair. "I just really want that with you, I guess. It's what I've always wanted. I don't want to die if it means missing out on that." Eddie's quiet, not lifting his head. His fingers don't even move as he's staring down at them, and Richie starts to spiral. "We don't— It's not a dealbreaker or anything. I'd sooner have you be happy than anything else, even if it means—"

"Richie, shut up," Eddie says, and Richie's jaw snaps shut, mouth going dry. Eddie doesn't say anything for a moment, and Richie's palms start to sweat. He finally sighs and lifts his head. "I just—"

"Are you crying?" Richie asks, because he's _ obviously _ crying, with his blotchy red face and his wet eyes. He scowls, too, pissed off and crying at the same time, and Richie just fucking _ loves _ this weird little man.

"Go fuck yourself, Richard," Eddie snaps. "Let me talk, dipshit."

"You've got the floor, baby," Richie says. Eddie scrubs at his eyes with the heels of his hands.

"I never thought about having kids with Myra," Eddie starts, still red-faced. "Well— I mean, I thought about having kids in a vague sort of way, but I _ really _didn't want kids with her. It felt… I don't know. So I figured I just didn't want kids anymore, I guess? And then we—" Eddie's red face gets redder, and he looks away, staring hard at the circle of lamplight on the wall.

"You blushin', Eds?" Richie asks, and Eddie's frown gets deeper. Fuel to the fire. Richie's always been good at pushing Eddie's buttons, for better or for worse. "My, my, you _ are. _ What could you _ possibly _ be—"

"For the love of God, shut the _ fuck up," _Eddie snaps. "Jesus Christ, you're so fucking annoying, Richie."

"You're the one marrying me," Richie reminds him.

"I want to have kids with you, Richie." Eddie turns back to look at him, and Richie grins at him. Eddie's lips twitch up into a smile that he hides behind his hand, rubbing at his mouth. Richie reaches out and takes his wrists, pulls his hands down. "I really do. I hadn't thought much about it before, but now we're getting married, and the thought of you being my husband— I don't know. It makes me want to make you a dad, too."

Richie lets go of Eddie's hands to cup his face, kissing him hard. Eddie tastes like salt from crying.

"I don't know if I'd _ be _a good dad," Richie says. Eddie pulls back. "It's not like I had a stellar role model."

"You're not your dad," Eddie says, and thank fuck for _ that. _Richie's dad was a mess, a heavyweight with a temper and no patience for a son he didn't want, and his mom was no better. Richie tries not to think of them. "I didn't exactly have a Brady Bunch upbringing myself, you'll remember—"

"Well, gee, Eds, if you set the bar this high, how _ ever _will we top it?" Richie jokes. "All we have to do is not punch our kids or psychologically torment them."

"My mother did not _ psychologically torment me—" _

"Oh, yeah, you're this neurotic because it's a fun hobby," Richie says. Eddie shoves Richie, and Richie grabs him, yanks him in to kiss again. After a moment, he retreats.

"Tease," Eddie says, no heat behind it.

"I lied earlier," Richie tells him. Eddie frowns. "I wasn't just thinking about dying old with you. I was thinking about how I wanna wake up every single day how I woke up earlier."

"By me scaring the shit out of you?" Eddie asks. Richie shrugs.

"I mean, yeah, kinda," Richie says. "I wanna wake up and roll over and see those big fucking Bambi eyes looking back at me every day for the rest of eternity. I don't wanna miss a _ single _ fuckin' day of that, Eds."

Eddie huffs a wet laugh. He turns his face away, and Richie turns it back. "That… Richie. That's _ so _ fucking gay."

Richie laughs, pulling Eddie's face in to kiss him loudly on the cheek. Eddie shoves at him, but Richie throws an arm around his neck and reels him in, wrestling him backwards onto the bed. Eddie puts up a fair fight, and he _ is _stronger, but Richie's taller, so he just collapses in a boneless heap on Eddie and weighs him down until Eddie gives up. Just as Richie leans up to laugh in Eddie's face, Eddie grabs Richie by the shoulders and flips them while Richie's off his guard. Richie ends up breathless on his back with a huff, Eddie pinning him to the bed with his forearm across his collarbone.

"Speaking of fucking gay," Richie says. He gets one of his legs in between both of Eddie's and shifts his thigh up into Eddie's half-hard dick through his sweatpants. Eddie inhales sharply, spine stiffening, and Richie laughs at him. "It's like the beginning of a bad porno."

"I'll show _ you _ a bad porno," Eddie threatens, and yanks off his sweatpants to pick up where they left off when Bill called.

It's easy, with Eddie, to forget everything else, to get lost in his hot skin and the curve of his spine and the small, breathy noises he makes when Richie does something he particularly likes. It's easy to forget what they have to do tomorrow, where they have to go, who they're going to see. It's easy to forget why it's all happening, that Richie disrupted the natural order just to bring his childhood best friends back from the dead and now they're suffering bewildering and cosmic consequences. It's easy to forget that everything he has can go away in seconds, that he's _ one _fucking mistake away from total disaster at all times.

Eddie cups Richie's face in his hand when he finishes, kisses him thoroughly even though he just came down Richie's throat, pulls him in close and holds him tightly while Richie gives himself over to mindless feeling. Eddie pulls Richie's boxer-briefs off, _ finally, _gets his hand around Richie's dick, and goes back to kissing him, mouth pressed bruisingly hard into Richie's. Richie bites at Eddie's bottom lip to get the savage twist of Eddie's wrist that he wants, and Eddie does it, rolling his hips along Richie's length at the same time as he does.

"Oh, shit," Richie breathes, and Eddie kisses him again, and Richie's mind really does empty, just becomes sensation and lust and love and Eddie, Eddie Eddie _ Eddie, _until it's the only thing Richie can think, say, see, feel. Richie comes hard in Eddie's tight grasp, Eddie licking into his mouth and kissing him through it until Richie's skin breaks out in goosebumps and he has to push Eddie away.

"You're such a messy fucking bottom," Eddie comments. Richie snorts. "I'm serious. What a mess, God, you— Did you get it on my fucking chin, Richie? I swear to God, I'll _ end _you—"

"Goodnight," Richie exclaims, ducking his head under the covers, and Eddie yanks him out and shoves a pillow over his face again.

* * *

In the morning, Richie manages to get them a flight to Bangor that leaves New York at 10:45am, and a rental car for when they land at 1:15 so they can drive the rest of the way to Derry. Richie calls Stan, and Patty says they can't come up until the next day, but that they'll be there bright and early then. He calls Bev next and tells her which flight they'll be on, and Bev books hers and Ben's tickets in the seats next to Richie and Eddie. After a bit of debate between the four of them on speakerphone, they decide to call the Derry Townhouse and rent rooms there. Richie looks to Eddie when the clerk on the phone asks if Richie wants one bed or two, and Eddie rolls his eyes.

"We're fucking _ engaged, _ you dipshit," Eddie reminds him.

"Oh, yeah," Richie says. "One bed, for me and my _ fiancé _Edward Kaspbrak—"

"Uhh," the clerk says, as Eddie punches Richie hard on the arm and Richie yelps, laughing. "O— Okay."

Eddie spends the time Richie is booking their flights packing, meticulously going through his checklist of everything he thinks they could possibly need. Richie periodically comes over while a webpage is taking a while to load and takes a bunch of shit out of his bag that he knows he's not going to use, but he's sure he'll find it in there once they arrive in Derry anyways.

Bev and Ben meet them at the airport, Bev running to Richie as soon as she sees him, wrapping him up in her arms. He lifts her off the ground and spins her around until she shrieks at him to put her down.

"How're you doing, Richie?" Ben asks. Richie drops Bev back down on her feet and shrugs.

"Been better," Richie says. "Been worse. I _ did _ briefly die earlier this year."

"That's a fucking pisspoor standard for how good a year is going," Eddie says. He takes Richie's duffel bag out of his hands and slides the strap over his shoulder.

"I'm a witch, not an invalid," Richie complains.

"You're not a witch," Eddie says, at the same time Ben softly goes, "Don't say _ invalid, _it's not nice."

"Witch, necromancer, radioactive man— It's all the same word for _ snow, _my man," Richie says.

"What did it take for this to start, twenty seconds?" Bev asks.

"Fifteen," Ben answers, and Richie yanks him into a headlock, sending Ben spiralling into a fit of wheezing laughter. When they finally straighten out, Richie leaves his arm slung across Ben's shoulders, looking back behind them to flash a grin at Bev and Eddie, but they're talking to each other in low voices, heads bowed together. Something Eddie says makes Bev laugh, and Richie watches Eddie smile, watches his face warm up. He nearly trips over Ben's feet, too distracted watching the two of them.

"Keep your eyes on the prize, Tozier," Bev says, finally turning her attention to him and shoving him in the back towards their gate. "Get going, old man."

Richie feels his friends like magnets. He always knows where they are, always feels a pull towards each and every one of them. It's not new, not by decades, but the Deadlights made it stronger and gave it pinpoint accuracy. He knows that Stan's far away, and feels him getting further away the closer their plane gets to Maine. Bev leans her head on Richie's shoulder and naps through most of the flight, so Richie just focuses on her closeness instead, on her and Ben and Eddie, and on how Mike and Bill are feeling closer and closer every minute.

Bev and Ben take a separate rental car, but they tail each other all the way to the Derry Townhouse, racing on the emptiest stretches of lazy afternoon roads in the backwoods of Maine, like they used to do on bicycles as kids on the same old streets they're burning rubber on now.

Bill's car is parked at the Townhouse already, and Richie turns sharply into the first empty parking spot he sees in the lot so he can get out of the car and towards Bill sooner. Eddie locks the car behind them as Richie opens his arms and Bill falls into him, burying his face in Richie's chest, his cheek pressing the soft material of Richie's shirt into the skin above Richie's heart.

"Fuck, it's been a _ week _and I still missed you like stupid," Richie says, "But don't let it go to your head, Big Bill." He crouches down and scoops Bill up, flinging him over his shoulder and turning back to Bill's car, ignoring Bill's shouting and writhing to get down as he ducks down to look for Mike through the tinted windows.

"Mike!" Richie shouts, squinting. The car door starts to open, so Richie backs up, dropping Bill down onto his feet. When Richie looks up again, Mike is out of the car and he's standing next to a lanky, pasty thirty-something guy, nearly Richie's height, with a face that looks so much like Bill's that Richie has to actually look _ at _Bill to confirm they're two separate people.

Richie realizes exactly who this is when he sees the empty flannel sleeve hanging down the guy's right side.

"Georgie," he breathes. Bill puts a steadying hand on Richie's shoulder.

"George, you remember Richie," Bill says. Georgie — or, George, he supposes, which _ does _ better suit a man in his thirties than a nickname like Georgie — looks Richie over, then smiles. He shifts towards Richie like he's not sure what to do, so Richie just goes to him and yanks him into a hug like he's his own long-lost brother, which he almost feels like he is, at this point.

"He's still figuring things out," Bill says, when they're all seated in the little bar area of the Townhouse, nursing some sweet concoctions Richie's making up on the spot behind the bar. He felt a fucked-up situation like this called for some light day drinking. "He wasn't really alive in that other… whatever. Wherever he was."

He hasn't stuttered once the entire time he's been talking, and Richie remembers how it was when they were kids, that Bill never stuttered when he was with Georgie. Something in him twists to look at the two of them sitting together, two adult brothers, like they're just any two schmucks off the street. Instead, Georgie was accidentally resurrected by his big brother's dumbass friend and a book he doesn't always understand and capabilities he hasn't even begun to fully explore, and now they have to try to teach him how to be a normal man when he grew up in the purgatory of death.

"Richie, there is… There's actually another favor I have to ask," Bill says. Richie tears his attention away from studying Georgie for any hint of death or decay to narrow his eyes at Bill. "The kids— Well, they're not kids anymore. The people who came back, they're going to be going down to Neibolt Street tomorrow night."

Richie's blood runs cold, and he looks to Eddie before he even realizes what he's doing. Eddie seems to feel his eyes on him, and he turns, searching for whoever is looking at him before he lands on Richie. He knows the moment they lock eyes, because he can feel that magnetic pulse, an electric thrill that shoots through him when Eddie's expressive face furrows into concern and he speed-walks over to the bar. Richie holds out a hand, and Eddie takes it automatically.

"Why are you so sweaty? What's wrong with you?" Eddie asks. He glances to Bill to see if he's got an answer, because even Richie knows his own chances of being articulate aren't great right now.

"We're going back to Neibolt tomorrow," Bill explains.

"Like hell we're going anywhere _ near _ that place," Eddie snaps, as soon as the word _ Neibolt _comes out of Bill's mouth. "I fucking died in there, Bill. I don't think going back is such a good fucking idea in that case, do you?"

"I think we should all go," Mike pipes up. "All of us. It's most important that you go, though, Richie. Eddie, you and Stan should be there—"

"If you think I'm letting Rich go anywhere _ near _ Neibolt Street, you're fucking _ insane," _ Eddie says. Richie looks down at him, at the anger in his red face. He puts down the tumbler in his hand, resigned. Eddie looks to him and must be able to read it on his face because he says, "Richie, _ no. _ It's _ over. _ We have no reason to go back there. We shouldn't have even come back to Derry! We _ should _be at home right now—"

"It isn't over," Richie cuts him off. He has to look away from Eddie's pissed-off face, and looks at Mike instead. "It's not over?"

"I don't think so," Mike says. "I think it's you, Rich."

"You think _ what's _me?" Richie asks, then stops. "Actually, hold on." He picks the tumbler back up, downs the fake-sweet contents in one swallow, then says, "Okay, go. What's me?"

"We destroyed It that day when Neibolt collapsed," Mike explains.

"When you left me in the fucking _ sewer," _ Eddie adds.

"You _ were _dead," Bev reminds him. "If we didn't make Richie leave, too, you'd both be dead right now."

Richie's hands go a little numb at that thought, and he looks back to Mike, whose mouth is moving, but he can't hear what he's saying. He's too busy thinking of how desperately he wanted to stay with Eddie, that he _ needed _ to stay with Eddie, that the right thing to do had been to _ stay with Eddie, _ and the others had forced him to leave against his better judgment. That feeling, the one he and Stan described, the one where they just _ know _what the right thing to do is. Richie understands, in that moment, with sickening clarity, that he was supposed to die that day, and he didn't, and now he's fucked everything up. He's brought countless people back from the dead, some not even on purpose, he's shit all over the natural order of things, and someday he'll get his reckoning. He knows it.

"I'm going to die," Richie says, his insides churning like a hurricane. He can't see anyone's faces; he can barely see five feet in front of him, his vision tunneling down into darkness. "Oh, fuck, I'm going to die—"

"Rich," Eddie's voice says, faraway, muffled as though he's shouting through water to Richie.

"I was supposed to die," Richie tells everyone and no one. A weight lands on his shoulder, and he flinches, but then there's what feels like dozens of warm weights, hundreds, and he can't get away, and he can barely breathe. "I have to die."

"Rich, Richie, hey, stay with me," Eddie's muffled voice comes, but Richie can't see him. He sees the glass tumbler on the bar, so he grabs it and smashes it without thinking, cutting open his palm and fingers. He hears his friends scream, but he can't focus on them. He grabs one of the glass shards and a hand lands on his wrist. He turns his head to see who got to him first, and it's Bill.

No, it's not Bill. It's _ Georgie. _ He sees Georgie, and Georgie sees him, the two of them making eye contact through the haze the panic attack has filled Richie's brain with.

"Richie," Georgie says, and Richie feels his voice wash over him like warm water. He reaches out, and Georgie's hand goes into his.

"Georgie," Richie breathes. Georgie smiles at him, and Richie can almost see the baby that he had been underneath, the tiny child who went out into the rain and never came home. Now he's grown, an adult without a life that came before adulthood, trauma to beat the band—

_ But, fuck, _ Richie thinks. _ He's alive. _

Georgie takes the glass shard out of his hand and passes it to someone else, and Richie takes a deep breath. Georgie goes into him, folding up against him, and Richie holds him like he's a child and Georgie's a toddler; he holds him like doing so will reassure him that everything will be okay. He holds him like doing it hard enough will _ force _everything to be okay, and Georgie hugs him back just as hard.

"Rich?" Eddie's voice asks. Richie squeezes Georgie, then releases him, letting Eddie take his uninjured hand and pull him out from behind the bar to sit down on the sofa pressed up against the wall. Richie drops his head into his hands and just breathes, ignoring the pain in his slashed-up hand as he tries to calm down. Embarrassment and fear starts seeping through his veins the more grounded he becomes, and he sniffles, wiping at his face with his sleeve.

"Fuck, sorry, I don't know what the fuck that was," Richie says, half-laughing, half-crying. He doesn't look up, doesn't want to make eye contact and see pity or anger or any of the emotions he's sure are on his friends' faces. Eddie kneels down in front of him, tilting his chin up until Richie's looking right at him. Eddie's face is red and wet when Richie finally sees him.

"Are you okay?" Eddie asks, very deliberately. Richie nods. "Are you _ sure?" _

Richie actually considers the question, this time. He feels that bone-deep certainty again, the knowledge that he was supposed to die that day. Looking down at Eddie, though, he doesn't give a shit about _ supposed to _ or any of that garbage. There's no fucking _ supposed to. _ If the universe was fair, Richie could've married Eddie out of high school like he wanted to, and they could've been happy together decades ago, and he never would've had to see Eddie die or lose all those kids or any of that.

Richie sits up straight. In that moment, he _ understands. _

"I was supposed to die," Richie repeats. Eddie's hands wrap around his wrists. "No, no, I— I was supposed to die, and I _ didn't." _

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Eddie asks. "You're not making any fucking sense, Rich, you're scaring the shit out of me."

"It wanted me to die," Richie says. "And then we killed It, and the Deadlights— Fuck, the _ Turtle—" _

"What about the Turtle?" Bill asks.

"It wanted me to die," Richie says. "It also wanted all those kids to die, and if It wasn't here— Those kids _ wouldn't _have died."

"Oh, shit," Ben says. Richie looks to him, and sees the pieces click together on his face, and knows Ben gets it, too. He knows they're right, feels it the same way he's felt everything else. "Richie's putting shit back to the way it's supposed to be. The way it would've been if It was never here."

"Why?" Bill asks.

"Why fucking anything?" Richie says back. "It's fucking Derry. We never stood a chance."

Eddie pulls Richie in, lets Richie bury his face into the junction of his neck and his shoulder while Richie just breathes, too overwhelmed to do much else. After a minute, he smiles; in the next moment, he's laughing.

"What the fuck is so fucking funny, you dickhead?" Eddie asks. Richie pulls back.

"My dad said I was a mistake and I'd never amount to anything," Richie says. He spreads his arms, grinning. "Now who's fucking laughing? I'm restoring _ cosmic balance to the universe. _I'm fucking Luke Skywalker!"

"Holy shit, you're insufferable," Eddie says, over Bev's teary laughter. "You're a maniac, you know that, right? I am _ never _ going to forgive you for this, you fucking— God, you're still bleeding, you're such an idiot, get up, get _ up—" _

"He loves me," Richie tells Georgie, as Eddie drags him up into standing and starts hauling him over to the stairs.

"We'll be right back, I'm gonna bandage his hand," Eddie calls over his shoulder. Richie lets himself be dragged by his good hand, his bleeding glass-cut hand curled up in his shirt while Eddie pulls him up the stairs to the room they rented and left all their bags in, still packed and still on top of the bed. Eddie shoves the bags off and starts digging through them for his first aid bag while Richie shuts their door and sits down on the edge of the bed.

Richie watches Eddie aggressively dig through his shit for a full minute before he says, "You good, Eds?"

Eddie shuts his eyes and exhales slowly through his mouth before saying, "No, Richie. No, I'm not _ good. _ I just watched my fiancé declare to a room full of our closest friends that he has to die before smashing a glass and almost cutting his own wrists in front of me, for pretty much no _ fucking reason." _

"I could feel it," Richie says. "It felt right."

"That doesn't mean it _ is _right," Eddie snaps. "You said the Turtle or whatever is flowing through you, right? Restoring cosmic balance or whatever fucking— So were the Deadlights, Rich. It's all a jumble. You can't just fucking kill yourself over a gut instinct."

“But it felt so strong," Richie argues. He knows it's a weak argument, but Eddie doesn't understand. He _ can't _ understand, nobody can ever really _ understand. _

"I can't lose you," Eddie says, his eyes still closed. He bows his head, taking another deep breath. He finally looks at Richie. "Richie, I— I _ can't." _

Richie has to get up. It's a gut instinct. He gets up, he goes to Eddie, he cups Eddie's face in his bloody hands, and he says, "Marry me tomorrow."

Eddie exhales all at once, like the breath got punched out of him. _ "What? _Rich, we're already planning a wedding. We have a venue—"

"Fuck it, we'll do both," Richie says. "I love you so much and I wish I could've married you the second we were both eighteen. I can't believe I've lost this much fucking time and I didn't ask you to marry me the second I had you back again."

Eddie huffs a weak laugh. "Rich—"

"I should've told you when we were all back here," Richie barrels on. "The _ second _I saw you at the restaurant, Eds, I should've told you the truth."

"What's the truth?" Eddie asks. He has blood smeared on his face from Richie's hand, but he doesn't even seem to have noticed, which is bewildering to Richie.

"Truth is, Eds, I've been in love with you since we were toddlers," Richie tells him. His gut instinct is to be completely honest and he'll be rewarded for it. He even thought about it for a moment, per Eddie's request, but he's sure this time. He knows he's right to do this.

"What?" Eddie breathes.

"Since we were in fucking preschool, man, I have been in _ love _ with you," Richie confesses. He's never told _ anyone _ that; he's barely admitted it to _ himself, _ let alone another living person. Let alone _ Eddie himself, _who's currently staring at Richie like he's grown a second head.

"You— Why didn't you say?" Eddie demands.

"I _ did _say," Richie reminds him.

"Yeah, when you were _ forty, _ not _ four," _ Eddie snaps. "Fucking _ shit, _Rich."

"I've been in love with you since I met you," Richie continues like he'd never been interrupted. "I used to write our names together on my notes, and then I'd burn my notes. I kept a Polaroid of you in the fake bottom on my bedside table drawer. I fucking— You saw, I carved our initials into the fucking Kissing Bridge. Eds, I have wanted to marry you since the second I first saw you, and the only thing that's stopping me from making you marry me right fucking _ now _is that Stan would probably murder me if I didn't wait for him."

"He would," Eddie says. "And we need a marriage license."

Richie's smiling before he even realizes he is. "Do we?"

"If you want to get married that soon, yes," Eddie says, and he's smiling, too. Richie shoves down the baser instinct to mock Eddie and replaces it with kissing him instead, which is probably a better alternative for a moment like this. They can go back to their regularly scheduled programming when they go back downstairs; for now, Richie's okay letting Eddie see him like this.

"I love you," Richie says, because he does.

"I love you, too," Eddie replies, unaware of how he's exactly everything Richie has ever wanted. "Don't think I fucking forgive you for that stunt with the glass, though, you gigantic fucking _ moron." _

"There's the man I know and love," Richie says, and Eddie kisses him one last time before he finally locates his first aid kit, pulls out the tweezers, and starts gingerly removing tiny piece of glass by tiny piece from Richie's hand, berating him mercilessly the entire time. Richie just grins and takes it.

* * *

Stan and Patty, as promised, arrive bright and early the next morning. Too early, in Richie’s opinion, because it’s not _ actually _bright when he drives to the airport to pick them up; the sun’s not even up yet, so it’s still dark outside when he pulls up into the visitor pickup lot to wait. Eddie reaches across the center console, hand turned up, and Richie tangles their fingers together, exhaling slowly.

“You okay?” Eddie asks. Richie makes a _ so-so _motion with his free hand. “We don’t have to do this.”

“Which part?” Richie asks, and Eddie smacks his shoulder. “Yeah, yeah, alright. No, I want to do this.”

“If you’re sure,” Eddie says, as Bill’s car pulls up beside them. Bill, Mike, Georgie, and Betty Ripsom are inside; Betty’s half-asleep, staring out the window. She grins and waves at Richie, and Richie waves back hesitantly. The people who came back all seem to recognize and like Richie on instinct, and, in cases like Betty Ripsom, that means he’s pretty much the only person she trusts in this group right now.

Ben and Bev come up on their other side. Adrian Mellon is in the backseat of their car, looking more relaxed than he had been when they’d picked him up that morning, fidgety on the front porch of Don Hagarty’s parents’ place. The others had other rides, promises that they’d be on Neibolt Street at the right time. Now, Richie just needs Stan and Patty, and he can— hopefully— close the door to Oblivion and set the cosmic fucking _ whatever _back to rights so he can just live a normal goddamn life.

He says as much to Eddie, and Eddie laughs.

“What the _ fuck _would a normal goddamn life look like, Richie?” Eddie asks. Richie leans back in the driver’s seat, considering the question. It’s a good one; he’s never really hard a normal life. His childhood was a shitshow, his teenage years were a hotbed of repression, his young adult life was a haze, and his adulthood was bizarrely struck through with fame and loneliness simultaneously. Coming back to Derry, killing It, resurrecting Eddie, all the shit that’s come after that, it’s just been one fucking shitshow after another.

“I’ve always thought normal was a sort of white-picket-fence sort of deal, you know?” Richie says. Eddie squeezes his hand. “I never actually thought about what it’d look like.”

“Richie,” Eddie says, then waits until Richie looks at him. “What do you want?”

“Whatever makes you happy,” Richie tells him, because it’s just true. He’d do anything if Eddie wanted him to.

“No, Rich,” Eddie says. “What do _ you, _Richie Tozier, want to do after all this is over?”

Richie considers it. He actually thinks, _ What do I want to be doing one week from today?, _ and comes up with, _ Eddie. _ He wants to be with Eddie, hopefully married to him. He wants to be back at their place in New York, he wants to be working on his show. He wants to have kids with him, and he wants to keep the Losers close, and he kind of wants to keep fucking around with books like _ Necromancy. _ Maybe there are other people out there like him, people who can do magic and spells and fuckall like he can that _ aren’t _ filled with total horseshit.

“I want to marry you,” Richie says. Eddie turns his face away, rubbing at his eyes with his sleeve. “Fuck, Eds, I listed _ one thing—” _

“Go fuck yourself,” Eddie snaps, so Richie tells him everything, _ everything _ he wants, the husband and the kids and the magic and the city and _ everything. _He stops talking just in time to burst into tears.

“God, Richie,” Eddie says, but it’s so fond that Richie just folds into him, awkwardly stretched across the center console and twisted up in his buckled seat belt. Eddie kisses the top of his head and says, “You can have all that, Richie. You’re allowed to have that.”

Richie doesn’t answer, still sniffling and buried into Eddie’s sweater. Eddie rubs his back in long, slow circles, says, “You can have that, Rich. I want that, too.”

“Do you _ actually?” _Richie asks. He looks down at his hands, tangled painfully in Eddie’s sweater, the injured one wrapped in clean white bandages Eddie had changed that morning when they’d woken up.

“Yes,” Eddie says. “You’re right. Well, _ I’m _right.”

“Way to make it all about you—”

_ “I’m right because,” _ Eddie says loudly over him, “I said we’ve never lived normal goddamn lives. It’s not just you, Richie. My life has never been right, either. This is the first thing I’ve known I wanted for _ myself _ in a long, _ long _time.” He laughs, and it’s wet-sounding; Richie tries to pull back to see if he’s crying, too, but Eddie tightens his hold and buries his face in Richie’s hair. “I’m finally able to live my own fucking life, and it took me forty fucking years to do it.”

“God, _ same,” _Richie says, and Eddie huffs another laugh, a little less sad this time.

“Don’t be such a dork,” Eddie tells him.

“I hate to tell you, dorkiness is contagious,” Richie says, before pulling back and kissing Eddie on the cheek messily. Eddie groans. “It’s also terminal. You have six weeks—”

“You’re _ such _a dick—”

“Am I interrupting?” Stan shouts through the car window. “I’ve been banging on the door for _ two minutes, _ you stupid idiots. Let us _ in.” _

“I really don’t know what I did in a past life to get called an idiot this often when my IQ is technically 132,” Richie says, unlocking the car doors to allow Stan and Patty inside. “Of course, that’s just according to a test I took on the Internet—”

“The fact that you took a test on the Internet knocks ten points off your score,” Stan tells him, slamming the door shut behind him and leaning up over the center console to shove his gloveless hands against the radiator vents. “You’re such a fucking dick, Richie. It’s, like, twelve degrees outside.”

“Well, _ excuse me, _I was having a revelation,” Richie tells him. Patty leans up on his other side, hooking her chin over the back of the seat. Richie turns to kiss her cheek, and she kisses his cheek in return.

“What sort of revelation?” she asks. She’s got Stan’s hat, gloves, and scarf on, her cheeks flushed bright red.

“A _ very _ gay one,” Richie assures her. She laughs, tired face lighting up, and Richie grins at her before turning back to Stan and Eddie. “What say you, gentlemen? Shall we _ blow _ this popsicle stand?”

“I actually hate you,” Eddie says, as Stan shouts, “Hi-ho, Silver!”

“Hey!” Bill shouts back. “Fuck off, Stan!”

_ “You _fuck off, Bill!” Stan yells giddily, grinning the whole time. Richie feels more whole than he has in his entire life, since the summer that ruined everything. He even feels better than he had before that, because now he can look at Eddie and tell him he loves him.

“I love you,” he tells Eddie, because he _ can, _because it’s not something he has to keep knotted up inside anymore. Eddie smiles at him.

“You’re such a fucking idiot,” Eddie says. “I love you, too.”

“Music to my ears,” Richie declares, throwing the car into reverse and backing out of his spot with little finesse. “Hey, Eds, my hand still hurts, got any Tylenol?”

Eddie looks down at his hand. A beat passes before storm clouds pass over his face. “Why the _ fuck _ are you driving with that hand? I can’t believe I didn’t notice, Richie, you _ idiot, _stop the car, I’m driving—”

“I rented the car—”

“I’m a much better driver anyways, I shouldn’t even let you drive when you have both hands— Stop the car,” Eddie repeats, so Richie does, because it’s easier than Eddie bitching him out for the rest of the ride.

“What happened to your hand?” Stan asks, as Richie climbs over the center console to get in the passenger seat and Eddie goes around the outside of the car like an adult.

“Smashed a glass and tried to slit my wrists,” Richie tells him. Nobody says anything, and Eddie climbs into the driver’s seat, slamming the door behind himself.

“I can’t believe you were driving on your bad hand, Richie, you’re insane,” Eddie grumbles, buckling himself in and adjusting the seat for his much shorter legs. Richie usually makes fun of him for it, but he’s still staring straight ahead, nervous of Stan and Patty’s reaction and hyper aware of Eddie’s eyes on him when he realizes Richie’s not mocking him. He frowns at Richie, then twists around to look back at Stan and Patty. “What the fuck happened to you two? You look like you saw a ghost— Oh, fuck, wait, what did you—”

“Richie just said he tried to kill himself,” Patty says, and Stan opens the car door and vomits onto the ground. Richie’s heart sinks, and he buries his face in his hands.

“You couldn’t wait more than two minutes?” Eddie asks. Richie shakes his head.

“I didn’t want to, Stan,” Richie says. He can hear Stan sit back up in his seat. His car door clicks shut. “It felt like the right thing to do.”

“It wasn’t,” Stan says, his voice rasping. He clears his throat. “Richie, you can’t—”

_ “You _did,” Richie snaps. He feels like he’s going to be sick, too, and he says, “Fuck, I’m sorry—”

“No, you’re right, I did,” Stan says. “So I can tell you you’re a fucking moron for trying to do it, too.”

“I know,” Richie says. Stan leans up and over Richie’s seat and hugs him from behind, the angle weird and uncomfortable but Richie collapses into it anyways. Stan lets go only to open his door and climb out of the car, and so Richie does the same, the two of them unfolding just to spill into each other the second they’re standing on the ground.

“Promise me you’ll never do it again,” Stan says.

“Do I—”

“If anything comes out of your mouth other than _ I promise, _ I’ll punch you,” Stan threatens. “And if it’s a _ joke, _ then I will actually just kill you myself.”

“I promise,” Richie says, because he actually _ does _have a very high IQ, and that means he’s smart enough to take Stanley Uris at his word. Stan hugs him tighter, then lets him go.

“Let’s go close the door,” Stan says. Richie grabs his hand.

“Stan, are we doing the right thing?” he asks, voice low, and Stan glances back down at the car before he shuts his car door and draws Richie away from Patty and Eddie by a step, turning them so they’re facing away.

“What do you mean?” he asks. Richie’s grateful he’s taking this as seriously as Richie means it.

“I mean, what if closing the door means I lose whatever this is?” Richie looks up, sees a bare tree across the parking lot, lit up by the lights of the airport. “I could do good things with it, maybe. Or at least try to figure it out.”

“Richie, you’re too smart to be this fucking stupid,” Stan says. “You’re the one who _ opened _ the door, you dumbass. Closing it isn’t going to take away your… _ whatever _ this is, anymore than killing It did, or bringing Eddie back did, or me. Richie, it’s _ you. _It’s not tied to the door, or even to Derry, I don’t think. Not anymore. It’s just you.”

Richie wants to cry, but he’s cried so much and hearing those words, it just makes him feel like his lungs are filled with helium, and he loves so much he could die from it. Instead, he lives for it, turns back into Stan, hugs him and says, “I love you, Stan.”

“I love you, too,” Stan replies. He squeezes him, then pushes him back at arm’s length, holds him by the shoulders. “Now, get in the fucking car before I _ make _you get in the fucking car, Richard.”

“Anything for you, Stan the Man,” Richie says, reeling Stan in to give him a kiss on the cheek before he gets back in the car, ignoring Eddie and Stan’s mutual bitching at him in favor of turning back to Patty and grinning at her. “Sorry for the hold-up, Patty, I was trying to convince your husband to run away with me.”

“Only if I get to keep Eddie,” Patty says. Eddie laughs.

“You’d be miserable with me,” Eddie tells her. “Richie’s got Stockholm syndrome. That takes a while to develop.”

“Yeah, I’m miserable,” Richie agrees with a stupid grin on his face.

“Oh, yeah, you _ look _miserable,” Patty says.

“Stop distracting me and let me drive,” Eddie snaps at everyone, just as Bill pulls up alongside them and beeps his horn twice. Eddie rolls down his window and Mike rolls down his.

“Beep beep, you guys, let’s _ go,” _Bill shouts at them, then peels out, laughing. Eddie follows at an aggressively responsible pace, in spite of Richie’s urging to race Bill. He quiets down the closer they drive to Neibolt Street through the predawn darkness of Bangor and then Derry, familiar streets made terrifying by nighttime. Richie recognizes Derry just as well in the darkness; he used to escape through these same dark streets from his house to Eddie’s, when he couldn’t stand to be near his parents anymore, or to Bill’s, or to Stan’s. He knows this place in his bones, and he knows he has to leave it in the past if he wants to have any sort of future.

Neibolt Street comes too quickly, and its proximity makes Richie’s _ bones _itch. He can tell Stan and Eddie are feeling similarly twitchy, because they’re both being hot-tempered with each other, snapping back and forth while Richie sits quietly with his eyes closed and tries not to throw up in his own lap.

Eddie parks the car. The silence that follows is deafening, and Richie huffs a dry laugh.

“I want to die,” Richie says. It’s not what he wanted to say, but it’s what he means. Eddie’s hand rubs the back of his neck through his sweatshirt.

“It’s almost over,” Eddie tells him. Richie knows that’s true, so he nods, grabs _ Necromancy _off the dashboard, and gets out of the car.

There’s already a gathering of people there, and they all turn to watch Richie. He’s kind of used to that sort of treatment, being that he’s sort of famous now and all, but the way these people are looking at him makes his blood feel electric. It makes him feel powerful and charged. He saved all of these people, from something that had taken them away before their time; he not only helped kill It, but he’s helping set the world to rights after everything It did to it. That’s even greater, in Richie’s opinion, than killing the monster. He’s also killing the monster’s _ legacy. _

And here is Richie’s legacy, spread out before him. The remains of 29 Neibolt Street have been cleared away in his absence from Derry, and now, on the lot, there’s… nothing. Nothing at all. The sinkhole has been filled in and grass has been spread on top of the entire property and it looks like nothing ever happened here. 29 Neibolt Street is just an empty, grassy lot now.

The people who stand in the empty, grassy lot, too, are his legacy. The people It took, the ones who should’ve still been alive today, are actually _ alive today, _ and that’s because of Richie. He looks them over, then walks right onto the property. He knows, without hesitation, that it’s safe now. He knows he’s the most powerful thing in the area, and he knows it’s _ okay. _

The others follow his lead, less confidently; Betty Ripsom looks like she’d sooner die, but she follows slowly. Eddie is the only one who matches his pace, catching up quickly and taking Richie’s hand. He guides Eddie to the center of the property, then puts the book down.

“Stan,” Richie says, and Stan comes over, stripping off his coat, then his sweater and the shirt underneath, leaving him bare-chested and shivering in the dark, dewy morning air. Eddie pulls a trowel out of his bag, and Richie uses it to carve the same design into the earth that he carved into Stan’s chest, only reversed. His hands start to shimmer and haze as he works, like they did when he healed Stan, like moonlight fracturing on water; he feels the gashes in his hand knit together, and so he tears off the bandages with his teeth and goes back to work.

Ben drapes his jacket over Stan’s shoulders, helping with the shivering as Richie uses his chest as a backwards model. By the time he finishes, both he and Stan are trembling, and Patty and Bill hurriedly shove Stan back into his clothes as soon as Richie says he’s done.

“It’ll be one more thing,” Richie says. He looks at the crowd of people around him, all the people he’s saved. He pulls his pocket knife from his jacket and says, “Everyone needs to give blood to the earth, inside the trenches I just dug.”

“Okay,” Eddie says. Richie holds up his hand and Eddie puts his palm face-up in it; Richie slices his palm like Bill had when they were children, and Eddie barely winces. Richie kisses his forehead, and Eddie smiles thinly before going to let his blood drip into the dirt.

Richie does this with each and every one of them. Some of them avoid eye contact with him, some can’t stop gushing to him even as he cuts their skin apart. Betty Ripsom hugs him. Georgie does, too. Beverly kisses him on the cheek.

“I’m so proud of you, Richie,” she whispers, and Richie tells himself to invite her over more often, to invite her over every day, to make her move in with him and the rest of the Losers so the seven of them never have to be apart again.

“I love you, Bev,” he says, then cuts open her hand.

He goes last, and he has to go to the center of his symbol to do so. The whole symbol is much bigger than him, a crop circle of a design in the center of the lot, fifteen feet by fifteen feet at its longest points. Richie stands over the very center, cuts his palm wide open, and turns his hand to let his blood flow into the heart of the lot. His hands starts to shimmer again, and the ground hazes, green grass and brown mud and red blood blurring and glowing, and Richie laughs before he remembers he actually has one more thing to do himself.

He starts to recite the spell backwards. He sees Patty look at him, sees her recognize the backwards, mottled Hebrew they’d recited forwards to bring Stan back, and she smiles at him. He smiles back and keeps reciting, turning his face up and shutting his eyes. He’s never felt more powerful, never felt more _ alive, _and when finishes and opens his eyes to see Eddie looking back at him, alive and breathing, he can’t help but laugh all over again.

It works. Richie can _ feel _ it, can feel the door closing. The grass closes up over the trenches Richie had dug, and Richie spends the next twenty minutes healing everybody’s hands with the same healing spell he’d used to heal Eddie and Stan when they first came back. He also lets people say whatever they want to him, lets them thank him or gush over him or, in a few cases, stand silently before walking away with a healed palm. He doesn’t know some of these people; there are some much, much older than him, and he wonders when _ they _were taken. Ben seems to recognize some of them from his research and keeps a running log of the ones he recognizes in the memo section of his phone. Richie makes a mental note to ask to see that later.

“Ready to go home?” Eddie asks, once the last hand — Georgie’s, as it turns out, because he’d fallen asleep in Bill’s car and Richie had to heal him after everyone else — is healed and Richie’s appropriately worn out.

“New York?” Richie asks.

“Well, the Townhouse,” Eddie says. Richie nods. “We can still sleep for a few more hours before two o’clock.”

“Sounds good,” Richie tells him, and that’s exactly what they do. They drive back to the Townhouse, Richie tells everyone goodnight, and he and Eddie fall into bed without undressing. Richie’s asleep the second his head hits the pillow, and he wakes up hours later without remembering his dreams to find Eddie curled up around him, warm breath spreading across the back of Richie’s neck, and he’s _ overjoyed. _

* * *

The day before, Richie and Eddie had gone to the town office to apply for a marriage license, using their old addresses with letters they had addressed to each other from childhood as evidence. The letters had come from a box stashed in a box in Bill’s parents’ basement, in a heap of other shit the Losers had left behind. Richie wants to spend days going through it, but there’s plenty of time for all of that.

The marriage license, they have. They’re told it’s valid for ninety days, but that there’s no waiting period between getting the license and having the wedding. Richie’d wanted to get married immediately, but Eddie reminded him of Stan, who would not only murder them but who has informed them several times that he would be more than happy to officiate their wedding, and so they wait.

So, when two o’clock comes, it’s been a whole day since they’ve gotten their marriage license, and Richie could _ die. _It’s twenty-four hours too long, in Richie’s opinion, but he’s glad they waited when Stan’s helping him bobby-pin his yarmulke in place.

“Haven’t worn one of these in fucking ever,” Richie says.

“That’s because you’re a heathen,” Eddie tells him. Richie flips him off without turning his head. Stan taps him on the back of the head and releases him.

“I love you guys so much,” Stan tells them both. “Don’t tell anyone I said that.”

“I’m gonna tell _ everyone _you said that,” Richie says, so Stan socks him in the arm. He winces, but Eddie laughs, so he knows he deserves it.

They decided to still go ahead with the wedding they were planning, too, for friends and family purposes, so Eddie’s less anal about everything having to be exactly right. They trim down the ceremony significantly, until Stan’s pretty much just going through their vows with them and marrying them. It’s just the Losers, and they’re all out in the clearing near the Clubhouse, out in the Barrens.

“My, uhh, vows are kind of short,” Eddie says.

“Just like you,” Richie tells him, and Eddie looks like he wants to shove him. “Continue.”

“But there’s not much I can say that I haven’t already said in the past few days,” Eddie says. “So, I just wanted to promise that I… love you, and that I’m going to love you for a very, very long time, and I promise I’m going to give you everything you want.”

“Dangerous,” Richie tells him. “Can I just promise to do the same thing?”

“Richie,” Eddie groans. “Jesus, write your own material for _ once.” _

“Why would I, when you’re twice as funny as I am—”

“I’m not trying to be _ funny—” _

“Why am I surprised?” Mike asks. “Can’t even get married without being at each other’s throats.”

“I’ll show ya being at each other’s throats,” Richie says, before diving in to bite Eddie on the neck. Eddie shrieks in surprise, shoving at him and nearly knocking him on his ass into the mud. Richie moves to tackle Eddie, but Ben grabs him.

“Literally just two more seconds,” Ben tells him. “Wait _ two more seconds, _ get married, and _ then _fuck up your suit.”

It’s strange to smash the glass against the muddy ground instead of an actual floor with Eddie, but they stomp it until it breaks instead of just getting pushed deeper into the mud, and Stan laughs at them until Bill and Bev have to separate them so Stan can breathe again. It’s worth getting married in the cold winter afternoon air of the Barrens, if they can have all of _ this _ while they do it.

“I love you,” Richie tells Eddie, once Stan’s calmed down and they’re allowed back together again. Eddie grins.

“I love you, too,” Eddie tells him in return. Stan lets them go, backs away and lets them kiss, even if it’s not traditional and even if it’s not the done thing, because Richie loves Eddie and Eddie loves Richie and Richie wants to show the entire world that he’s allowed to kiss Eddie Kaspbrak. He wants everyone to know Eddie Kaspbrak is _ his _ husband, that he fought through hell and back to get to this point and that he’s finally fucking _ won. _

They brought two boxes of coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts and a bunch of sandwiches Mike made down into the Clubhouse, lay down a blanket, and all sit on the ground and eat. Richie takes off his tie and his yarmulke as soon as he can and sprawls out, laughing.

“I got to marry a _ dude,” _Richie says happily. Stan laughs.

“Don’t mind me, I’m just some _ dude,” _Eddie snaps, and Richie reaches up to reel him in and kiss him soundly.

“I got to marry _ Eddie Kaspbrak, _the star of all my wet dreams in this very Clubhouse—”

“You’re _ disgusting—” _

“Mm, tell me I’m gross,” Richie insists, “that’s how four of them started—”

_ “I hate you—” _

“And yet,” Richie says, “you married me.”

Eddie stops, his cold cheeks already flushed red, but his face goes even darker when he blushes, saying, “Oh, right.”

“You _ married _me,” Richie says, pushing his advantage. “Mr. and Mrs. Richard Tozier—”

“Ugh,” Eddie says. “You ruined it.”

“I want your name,” Richie tells him. Eddie looks at him.

“You wanna change your name, Richie?” Bev asks. Richie shrugs, shoving Eddie off of himself and sitting up.

“I don’t have any attachments to Tozier,” Richie says.

“Except for the TV show with your name in the title,” Mike points out. Richie pauses.

“Oh, yeah,” he says, and Eddie starts laughing so hard he stops making sound. Richie can’t help but laugh in the face of all _ that, _but he manages to say, “No, no, I can just— I’ll keep the stage name, plenty of actor-people have stage names, right? But I’ll change it, like, legally.”

“Why?” Eddie asks, reasonably calmer now that Richie’s sobered up a little bit himself. “What’s so good about Kaspbrak?”

“I just mean— At least _ your _dad liked you before he died,” Richie says.

“Ah,” Eddie replies.

“It’s not a big deal,” Richie insists, “but if we can avoid it, I mean— It’s_ not _a big deal.”

Eddie takes Richie’s hand and kisses the back of it, says, “We can do whatever you want, Rich. It doesn’t matter to me. I mean, I don’t care about my name all that much either way. It’s— It _ was _my mom’s, but it was my dad’s first, you’re right. And Myra’s—” Eddie pauses, and Richie knows he’s been found out. “Myra’s changed her name back to her maiden name.” He looks to Richie, one eyebrow raised.

_ “Myra _got to be a Kaspbrak,” Richie complains, and Eddie laughs.

“God, you’re such a baby,” Eddie says before kissing him. Richie accepts the kiss as an apology, shoving Eddie onto his back on the blanket, narrowly avoiding knocking Bill over with Eddie’s shoulder as he does so.

“Oh, come on,” Stan complains, drawing his legs away from them as Richie kisses Eddie into the blanket. Richie lifts his head to grin at Stan.

“That’s a hate crime,” Richie says. “Don’t be a homophobe.”

“I’m pansexual—”

“Don’t be self-hating, then,” Richie insists. “I just got _ married, _Stan, cut me some slack, I love this guy, look at him, he looks like an—”

“Don’t—”

“—angry little ghoul—”

“I told you not to,” Eddie says, then flips Richie onto his back into the dirt and wrestles him into shouting “Uncle!” with his face pressed into cold mud. Eddie kisses the clean corner of his mouth when he lets him up.

“What now?” Richie asks, meaning in a more immediate sense. _ What now? _ Do we clean up? Do we go back to the Townhouse? Do we get dinner later? What do we _ do? _

“Well, we got married,” Eddie says. “We still have to have the big wedding, but let’s start by just… Let’s go home, and start looking for… for options. For kids, I guess.”

“You _ guess?” _Richie asks.

“We’re not getting any younger, Rich,” Eddie reminds him. “I’m not gonna have a baby when I’m sixty, that’s just stupid.”

“Okay, sure,” Richie says. “I just meant, you know, _ What now, I’ve got mud all over my face and we still have to check out of the Townhouse, _but, yeah, we can have a baby if you want.”

“Are you pregnant?” Bev asks. “That’s exciting.”

“Yeah, how’d you know?” Richie says. He wipes the mud off his face with his hand and flings it at Eddie, who yelps and successfully avoids getting hit by being so damn short. Richie folds himself back up next to Eddie on the blanket and picks his sandwich back up. “No, we’re— We’re considering adopting a kid or something, though.”

“‘Or something,’” Eddie echoes.

“Yeah, you know, like a dog, or a new husband who doesn’t make fun of me—”

“Good fucking luck with that,” Eddie says. Richie kisses him on the cheek.

He hasn’t forgotten about what Bill said, that he wanted to propose to Mike and that there still wasn’t a ring on Mike’s finger. He hasn’t forgotten that their lives still have to keep going, that they’ve all got to make their way back to New York and pick their lives up where they left off all over again, but he knows, this time, they’re reestablishing a new normal. That it might not be white-picket-fence, but it’s something better: it’s his _ life, _the crazy fucked-up shit he’s always wanted and none of the bullshit he hated, the point he never thought he’d reach even in his wildest dreams.

“I love you,” Richie says, and Eddie smiles.

“Love you,” he replies. Richie could die happy, right in this moment, he _ could— _but he won’t for a long, long time.

**Author's Note:**

> I do plan to continue with this series, but in a more slice-of-life domestic sort of way. If you wanna talk about the series, or IT, or really anything with me, feel free!
> 
> You can talk to me on Twitter at [@nicolelianesolo](https://twitter.com/nicoIodeon) or on Tumblr at [andillwriteyouatragedy](http://andillwriteyouatragedy.tumblr.com/).


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